OP05 Complete Meta Overview (Patreon)

Hi Again,

Kai (@ikailakai) here.

It seems like my first article on the Patreon landed quite well, even though I was wrong on some points. RP Luffy was stronger than I thought it would be, but I’m glad that I was right on RP Law! The lists were not the best, but I hope that that article was helpful, as it’s the most research I’ve done on an article up until now.

This article will be on OP05, as promised. It will actually be similar to the last article, but I am ready to go into much more depth, as it’s less speculation, and more of what I have experienced, playing in OP05 already for 3 months in Japan.

I will write another meta retrospective like I did for OP04, but for now I think it’s more important to have a brief rundown of every deck, as the culmination of the meta in Japan currently. This is an in-depth review of the current meta after it has evolved throughout the set, and should act as a good reference point for English players as we have tried a ton of stuff, and these were our answers to the meta, trust me.

Comparative Graph

Aside from Rebecca, these were the 9 most used leaders of OP05, ordered by color roughly, and not by presence.

×  = 2:8 Losing

△  = 4:6 Losing

-   = 5:5

◯  = 6:4 Winning

◎. = 8:2 Winning

These are rough estimates, and I can lots of help putting this together from people with more experience in some of these matchups. You may disagree, and some lists will preform differently into different matchups, but this is from the perspective of the current meta game and popular lists for each leader.

If we were to look at presence at the end of OP05, we have a mysterious source from @ophirata that claims to have accurate percentages of the Aichi championship. Although we don’t know the source of their information, the data looks somewhat correct and can be used as a good gauge.

The tournament had 1435 people, making it one of the largest tournaments Japan has ever had.

1. 31.0% Sakazuki
2. 20.1% Katakuri
3. 13.3% Purple Luffy
4. 11.4% Enel
5. 5.2% RP Luffy
6. 4.7% Uta
7. 2.1% Zoro
8. 12.2% Other with presence of less than 2%

We will not be looking at Uta in this article, as this will be focusing on the start of OP05, where Uta is not available yet. However, Uta did not shift the meta as much as people thought she was going to, so her existence does not change much, similar to how the One Piece world has functioned without her existence until Oda made her canon retroactively. That came off cynical, but I love Uta. I think she is better than people give her credit for so I’ll surely write something for her when the start deck is soon to release overseas.

What I will do, is do a very brief rundown of all 10 of these leaders, as well as 1 more that I think should have a higher presence, and then go into more depth on a few of them.

When doing a brief rundown on a leader, I will visualize it on a graph with 5 categories.

Ease of Use: This entails the difficulty of not only picking up the leader, but mastering it. The lower that this is, the harder a leader is.

Consistency: This entails how often the leader will be able to control their draws and their moves to push a game plan forward. Generally leaders with this stat low, have high highs, but low lows.

Strength: This entails the potential power of a leader. If everything goes their way in the current meta, how unstoppable they can be. Leaders with high consistency and high strength are going to control the meta often.

List Flexibility: The entails how many cards are unchangeable in this list. If a list has a 45 card core, it is hard to adapt it to a shifting meta, but if a deck only have a 30 card core, there is likely a way to configure a list to adapt to the meta, if the consistency and strength are not sacrificed.

Mirror Skill Expression: Some decks are easy to use, but very technical in the mirror. This stat is relevant when talking about meta decks as the skill expression in the mirror is what can largely decide if a deck is usable to attempt to go 9-0 at a championship or regional.

Now that this ground work is set, let’s quickly go through all of the leaders.

Roronoa Zoro

Believe it or not, Zoro is not good in the current meta. Zoro’s strength was always in his consistency. However, some of the new leaders just purely stylistically beat Zoro. This includes Enel and Sakazuki.

Zoro is extremely hard to play, and therefore, the mirror has always been a place to show off that you are better than your opponent at the game. His consistency using many different searchers that are thankfully getting unbanned very soon is insane, and his list is very flexible, which is likely why he has survived many restrictions in the English format.

However, Zoro stylistically crumbles versus Enel, who requires 3 large hits to finish the game, and can regain life, and Sakazuki, who can simply play Lucci and destroy half of your firepower. Sakazuki is still beatable with a rush focused Zoro build akin to those in OP02, but has very little chance against Enel, and yellow in general will never be a free win.

Trafalgar D. Law

Law is a very popular leader in Japan although it might not seem like it. Law players dedicate themselves hard to the leader, and change their list to fit any meta. However, all of the Law players I know have stopped playing Law. Although Law used to be able to deck build, outplay, and outdraw your matchup, Law is stylistically countered by Sakazuki too hard. If Sakazuki does not draw well, and Law draws well, it’s still perfectly winnable for Law. However, Sakazuki’s consistency is higher, and it only takes a few Luccis or Hound Blazes to prevent Law from ever using his leader ability throughout the entire game. Japan has this weird impression that we hate Law, but I think it’s more that people acknowledge that Law is hard, and focus their resources on learning other decks, while the Law cult keeps trying to cook. Law was excellent in a meta where Sakazuki played more like a Blue deck, but now struggles immensely. I would recommend playing RP Law if you really want to play Law, but if you want to win through skill expression, I would recommend Sakazuki.

Belo Betty

Belo Betty is the first proper burn aggro deck in the game. This means she can finish the game in 4 turns if she high rolls, and the opponents low rolls. However, this means that if you can survive until turn 6-7 stably, Belo Betty will struggle immensely. The benefit of Belo Betty in OP05 was that she was a control/ ramp deck killer.

She destroys both Luffys, and can fight with Sakazuki on a good day. However, she gets dps checked by midrange decks that can lock down the board.

Part of the strength of Belo Betty is in that she is unpopular, but requires the opponent to know how to fight her. If you understand how to fight Belo Betty, she is significantly less scary.

Rebecca

I CAN EXPLAIN

I know I am biased towards Rebecca, but Rebecca really is good and no one plays it here. She has great matchups that dominate the opponent if played right, but can struggle if you do not know how to play certain matchups. If Rebecca is free to do what she wants for even 1 turn, the game can be over. Rebecca requires an immense amount of planning that I have realized is very hard to put all into words. Rebecca thats to her leader ability, is one of the most consistent leaders in the game, and can beat the current version of Sakazuki. This is probably Sakazuki’s only hard losing matchup, but I wrote that it is 6:4 because Sakazuki can change his deck list to include more high cost cards to counter Rebecca. However, this makes Sakazuki weaker to deaks like Law and Belo Betty. Rebecca is in a great spot and is a sleeper deck that people aren’t willing to give a try due to her difficulty, and perception that she is a worse version of Sakazuki. The weakness of Rebecca comes in her difficulty to deal with ramp decks, and decks that keep playing large bodies until Rebecca cannot clear them. Although Rebecca can recycle her resources very well with 4c Rebecca, She cannot retrieve events, meaning that Katakuri can be difficult, but no where near as hard as OP04 Rebecca vs Katakuri. Rebecca’s presence is too low to justify deck building to counter, letting Rebecca be a good submarine deck that could potentially pop up in the right meta, used by the right player.

Sakazuki

Sakazuki is the terror of OP05. It is the strongest deck, bar none almost. Although it doesn’t have as many massively winning matchups, every matchup can be won with good draws, and good play. People that can play Sakazuki at 100%, will win everything. Look at the Singapore Championship, or the Philippines Championship, where Japanese players won 2 days in a row, in the 3vs3, and 1vs1 tournament, twice, thanks to their skill using Sakazuki. If you are the best player in your region, play Sakazuki. If you want to become better at the game, learn Sakazuki. Don’t just play Sakazuki as you can’t pick him up by just playing a few games and feeling your way around. Watch people play, read articles (I’m gonna make one don’t you worry), talk to people about specific board positions, and learn it step by step. Sakazuki’s depth is so deep that you will understand why people are able to consistently win in a card game that’s inherently inconsistent. Sakazuki’s only meta bad matchup is Katakuri, but even this is winnable with tech cards and good playing. Sakazuki is inevitable, and is the best deck for sure. There are decks that can fight with him, but generally are weaker against some other decks. Sakazuki is well balanced and rewards people who deck build well, and play well. The only reason why I don’t have his strength maxed out is because Sakazuki wins with a series of small attacks accruing a resource advantage and board advantage over time, resulting in a state where you never felt pressure, but you lost without even doing anything. Sakazuki makes many decks unviable, so you won’t hit a random landmine player in Round 1 bringing a D tier leader that can only beat Sakazuki. Sakazuki is the tier list and you’re just living in it.

RP Luffy

In Japan, Radical beam and 9 cost Whitebeard are of course not restricted, meaning that if RP Luffy gets off the perfect line of play, it is almost unstoppable. However, RP Luffy is very inconsistent, and as he cannot use 9 cost Whitebeard or Radical Beam in the English format, is relegated to an aggro style.

RP Luffy has always been in an awkward spot in Japan at least, where if the stars align, he can beat anything, but most of the time, he is that Landmine Deck that you just don’t want to see in R1-3.

This being said, RP Luffy is insanely fun once you get 7 cost Kid down.

RP Law

RP Law was actually the strongest deck in week one of OP05, so be wary of this deck’s potential strength against people who are not ready to fight it.

RP Law is interesting in that he can fight with many leaders evenly. Similar to RG Law, there are not many hard winning or hard losing matchups. Dissimilarly to Law, however, RP Law can control the board much harder, and permanently remove characters as his leader ability sends them to the bottom of the deck. RP Law’s ability to eliminate Hina/Lucci against Sakazuki, and his ability to simply out-aggro the opponent in some cases makes him a very stable option for those who don’t want to play Sakazuki, but still compete in the meta. One of the issues with RP Law is his consistency. RP Law can function without drawing all of his key cards such as 3c Law, 5c Kid, Shachi&Penguin, Bepo etc, but does not have a reliable way to draw these aside from the 3c Law, which will always have incredible priority in board clear. RP Law is at the mercy of his draws, but is saved by the fact that many of the cards are good in RP Law to play off of Leader Ability. The issue lies when Law doesn’t have ways to reduce power, and is forced to minus his own don just to play a character. Red Green Law players will find themselves at home with this deck.

Purple Luffy

Looking at the graph, you can see why Luffy dominated the meta for a while. Luffy has a built in Onigashima, letting him get to 9don on turn 4 guaranteed if he goes first. Not only this, but Luffy can draw his life from his leader ability to gain this don, letting him have massive resource advantage and consistency over other decks, similar to Whitebeard. Luffy fell out of the meta slightly as the new version of Sakazuki could beat the current Luffy lists. However, Luffy has also adapted, and can now at least fight with Sakazuki. Luffy is highly consistent, and oppressive as a consistent ramp deck, and will never be lower than A tier for the foreseeable future.

Luffy is quite easy to pilot, but has a weird demerit in that the cards in a Luffy deck are ugly. I wanted to use Luffy before it was strong because it was finally a Luffy leader with potential. However, it used cards like Magellan, Urashima, Scratchman Apoo, Paulie, etc. This is not the Strawhat Crew I remember.

Katakuri

Everyone’s favorite leader. Katakuri is stronger than ever in OP05. Compared to OP04.75, there are more leaders that can contest Katakuri, but Katakuri is very simple and oppressive. Katakuri automatically banishes the opponent’s life while gain life themselves from massive bodies on the board. This makes it very hard to shut Katakuri down once he gets to high Don with at least 2 life left. Katakuri is very beginner friendly as it will teach the fundamentals of playing the game, but has a limit to how much it can teach. I personally would recommend playing a deck that teaches the game so that you’re not trapped into playing Katakuri forever. However, Katakuri is still strong, and you can totally get away with it still.

Katakuri can consistently pick up and use 7mom and 10mom to push their lead, while also hitting for 7000 and checking life in down time. Katakuri seems stronger than Enel in the current format, and is easy to use at a high level. As you’re playing Katakuri and not Sakazuki, you must play at 100% to justify using Katakuri. Katakuri will finish games in 8 or less turns most of the time, and not use the full 30 minutes, so take your time to think about other options and plays if you are presented them. Conversely, when you only have 1 obvious good play, don’t overcomplicate it and look for more options, take the good play and be aware of when to rest your characters.

Enel

Enel is well rounded, but interestingly, essentially, a worse version of Katakuri in my opinion.

Enel is still strong, but cannot use 10Mom. He is still easy to use as he’s yellow and has many of the same tools. He has more room for outplaying in the mirror as there is a lot of technicality to when to leave things active or not. The list can make Enel an aggro deck, or a control deck. Enel has lots of flexibility, but lies awkwardly between a few decks.

If you want to play aggressively, Katakuri is better.

If you want to play defensively, Queen is better.

Enel is a well rounded B tier leader that is carried by a very interesting variable that’s hard to quantify. Enel is very hard to play against.

Enel’s moves are quite straight forward, in that he wants to play things that continue to power up his board, and push forward. The timing of this will change based on if you play a control list, or an aggro list, but the philosophy will always be the same. However, it is very hard for someone who is inexperienced in the matchup or at the game, to beat Enel. Enel is very good vs bad players. Enel’s leader ability requires the opponent to get 3 hits through on the same turn to actually kill Enel. However, a good player will only let him use his once to twice, resulting in a vanilla leader that can’t use 10mom. However, Enel’s ability to beat bad players is an undeniable factor. So if you just want to check the skill level of your surroundings, bring Enel and test them. Even if Enel isn’t in the meta, you must know how to fight him, or else he will become meta. Please don’t let Enel be meta, I’ll be sad.

Whitebeard

Whitebeard’s presence is close to 0, although it has healed recently. Whitebeard is weak to Purple Luffy, and Enel, making it very hard for Whitebeard to find a space in the meta. However. The meta has changed. Luffy runs less high cost bodies, and Enel is falling out of the meta. Perhaps Whitebeard could be in a good spot in this Sakazuki and Katakuri dominant meta.

Whitebeard is a unique leader where although it is easy to use vs most decks, can be very complex in the mirror. Whitebeard’s power is still undeniable, but was stylistically countered too hard at the start of the meta. Although I suspect people to be using Enel and Luffy at the start of the meta, where Whitebeard might struggle, when the meta settles down, Whitebeard could find an opening to shine again. In Japan, pure Whitebeard was the only Whitebeard, as Rush Whitebeard would lose in the Whitebeard mirror. However, as Whitebeard is almost nonexistent in this meta, the Rush, Aggro Whitebeard seems like the correct choice in my mind, meaning that the restrictions might not hurt the English meta’s ability to cope Whitebeard. Maybe keep this leader in mind for some day in the future. For reference in the large comparison graph, this is how I feel Whitebeard’s matchups would look like.

Now that we’ve briefly went over the leaders as an overview, let’s go into deeper depth on the top tier.

First of course, everyone’s favorite thing: Tierlists

Remember that this is relative. As I’m not ranking random decks like Zed, or Ivankov, I get to spread out the popular leaders more distinctly.

Zoro and Law, who are distinctly popular and strong in OP04 and overseas struggle immensely due to the advent of Sakazuki and Enel.

RP Luffy is powerful, but gated by his consistency

Belo Betty and RP Law are limited by their consistency and continuous damage threat, while Enel’s potential is as high as the opponent’s strength.

Katakuri and Purple Luffy are consistent, strong, and can contend with Sakazuki

In actuality, I would put Rebecca in A tier.

Sakazuki is the best.

I will only post a list for lists in B tier or higher, as I feel like I do not want to promote playing decks that I feel are not especially strong in the current meta.

As I did last time, I will post a list, and some tips for playing the deck. I will go into a little more depth this time as I can actually speak in context of the meta.

We will go from the top of the tier list down, but feel free to read up on the leaders you are especially interested in. However, I will try to put tips on fighting each leader in each section as well, so I think it is worth reading through all the way.

Sakazuki

Generally when you build a deck, the want to have 12 4ofs, and 1 2of. This is the best way to increase consistency. On top of this, you don’t want to have too many cards without counter, or too few or too many cards with 2000 counter. Finding this balance is tough, but many decks have been able to fit into a template of 12x4 + 1x2, 12 2000 counters, and less than 16 cards with counter. Although not every deck will fit into this template, many people will try to make this template as a start. However, if you look at Sakazuki, most lists will have a wide spread of 2ofs, 3ofs, and the occasional 1of, which is very uncommon for Japanese lists. I am both excited and scared to see how many 1ofs English lists put in. On top of this, this deck has 26 counterless cards, and only 8 2000 counters. Sakazuki breaks so many of the deck building fundamental rules, that it’s easy to see why it took almost 2 months to find a list like this to dominate the meta.

But why is the list like this? The strongest ability that Sakazuki has is not only that he’s Blue and Black, or that he can minus cost for free, it’s that he can refresh one card every turn. This makes his consistency monstrous, as he will rarely brick. As Sakazuki can comfortably go through half of his deck each game, a lot of Sakazuki’s deck building fundamentals differ from normal deck building fundamentals.

Generally when building a deck:

4 copies: You want and will play every single copy of the card that you get, or you need the card in your early game

3 copies: You want 1 per game for sure, but you’re not picky on when you get it.

2 copies: You would be happy to get 1, but you can survive without it

1 copy: You don’t need the card to win, and absolutely don’t ever want more than 1, but if you do draw it, you will use it.

However, with Sakazuki, as he can comfortably go through half of his deck, it looks more like this:

4 copies: You want at least 2 of this card in your hand / trash

3 copies: You want a copy by turn 4

2 copies: You want 1 per game for sure, but you’re not picky on when you get it.

1 copies: You would be happy to get 1, but you can survive without it

—By my logic at least.

As such, Sakazuki’s list is tremendously flexible, and as he can simply get rid of the cards he doesn’t need, he can put in many more tech cards than other decks. He can afford to play less 2000 counters as well, as 4c Rebecca can pick them back up, and he can generally cycle faster to find them.

This was all on deck building theory, but I do think it’s interesting to scratch the surface of it a little bit. I can write about this for another 5 pages if this is what the article was about, but let’s get into how to play the deck.

As Sakazuki, you generally want to take second. This is because there is no particularly strong move going first that can out tempo going second.

On turn 2 going second you have the option between 4c Borsalino, 4c Kuzan, and 4c Lucci. As Sakazuki, you want to hold on to your Lucci to get good value KOs, so the general choice is between Borsalino and Kuzan. Although there are 3 of each, I see this more as a “6of” as as long as you can play one of these on turn 2, which is quite likely, you will be in a good position. In some matchups like the mirror, Kuzan will have higher value, and matchups like Enel, Borsalino will have more value. You can’t always pick and choose, but there is not much of a wrong answer, aside from not playing anything. If you choose not to play anything and Hound Blaze on this turn, you lose a lot of momentum in Sakazuki. It’s important to keep developing your board, but do so efficiently. Playing a Hina on turn 2 going first is almost never the correct play, as you’re losing your valuable on play effects for an extra hit next turn.

The resource management in Sakazuki is very important, as well as planning. As long as you have either Rebecca, or Mansherry plus either Hina, or Lucci, and the other components are in your trash, you can also do what is probably this deck’s strongest flow of movement, Rebecca -> Hina -> Lucci, or Mansherry at the beginning to retrieve a component.

Keeping combo pieces in your hand, cycling pieces that you feel you won’t need anymore, like a 4Kuzan that came a little bit too late, or a Hound Blaze in the mirror matchup in midgame, will separate good and bad players.

When going first, you will pass your first and second turn a lot, only breaking the cycle with Brannew on turn 2 if you happen to have it. Going first you’ll want to try to play 7c Borsa/9c Mihawk at good timings to efficiently clear the board.

When going second, you want to find a good curve, like 2Brannew, 4Kuzan, etc etc.

There is a lot more to this than just this, but the point that everyone is curious about it how to play the mirror. So let’s rapid fire review the mirror, and what you will want to do.

Mulligan:

First: Brannew+ Hound Blaze, or Components of Rebecca Hina Lucci

Second: Brannew + 4Kuzan/4Borsalino (strong early game curve)

F will notate the player going first, and S will notate the player going second.

The number will be the maximum Don that is available.

Keep in mind I won’t always mention it to reduce clutter in writing, but the leader ability to -1 cost something is used often as is implied in plays such as “Great Eruption (+Leader Ability) + 7c Borsalino.”

F1: Pass

S2: Brannew

The search priority depends heavily on your hand, but remember that black characters are retrievable by 4c Rebecca, and events and blue characters are not.

F3: 6000 Leader + Brannew

Do not play Ulti on this turn, unless you also have Hina in your hand. You will lose too much tempo trying to utilize Ulti’s bottom decking ability without building board.

S4: Kuzan / Borsalino

I would prioritize Kuzan if I have both, but some people prioritize Borsalino. I like having the security of drawing a card and having a threat on the board, and some people like the security of having a character that cannot be KO’d by Great Eruption + Lucci

F5: Great Eruption + Lucci

When going first, you will want to set up your hand so that you can absolutely KO or bottom Kuzan on turn 2 if it comes out. Letting Kuzan stay on the board is a death sentence. Conversely, if S4 didn’t play Kuzan, Borsalino, or Lucci, then F5 should have massive priority on playing Kuzan himself. This will flip the matchup, so do not throw away Kuzan with Leader Ability when going first until you know you won’t play it on F5.

S6: KO Board, or Spread Board

Generally you want to keep clearing the opponent’s board, but you will have to manage your resources for when you want to clear the opponent’s larger threats. For example, on this turn, you may be able to do Rebecca -> Hina -> Hound Blaze, but this is a massive resource investment for the player going second, which gives the advantage to the player going first. Know what F7 is going to play, and play around that.

F7: 7c Borsalino

Generally S6 can only play 1 character that is 5 cost or less. F7 will want to bottom it and establish a 7c character.

S8: Great Eruption + 7c Borsalino

This is an important turn. If F7 doesn’t play Borsalino, you are in a good spot, but if they do, you want to answer it with a Borsalino of your own. Although you can cleanly clear it with Rebecca -> Hina - > Lucci, this is a big resource loss and can give the advantage to the player going first. As such, you will want to be careful with the resources you use early on, to make sure that you’re ready to answer the opponent’s more threatening plays

F9: 9c Mihawk

Not many people run Mihawk anymore, but Mihawk can help give an advantage to the player going first. Without Mihawk, the best thing to do is to again respond with Great Eruption + 7c Borsalino. But as we’ve already played one, the odds of having a second one is low.

Generally in this matchup, you don’t want to be the first person to play a board clear character or combo, unless you have a response ready for when they do the exact same thing back.

This can be anything from

7c Borsalino -> GreatEruption + 7c Borsalino -> 9c Mihawk

To

Rebecca/Hina + Lucci -> Rebecca/Hina + Lucci -> Ice Age + Lucci + Sabo

And even to

Rebecca/Hina + Lucci -> Rebecca/Hina + Lucci -> 7c Borsalino + Hound Blaze

Having a plan for when the opponent has a weak turn is also important. Like the Kuzan in hand going first just in case the opponent has no good S4 turn, to being ready to play Ulti + Sabo in the late game when the opponent lets you keep your board.

There are many combos, situations, and scenarios that you will want to internalize, and know exactly what the optimal play is, so you don’t sit there thinking for 10 minutes about 3 turns ahead.

People will mess up in the mirror. There are so many factors and intricacies. For example: I almost lost a mirror match from chemical warfare, where my opponent clearly didn’t brush his teeth and exhaled very hard at me after I Rebecca Hina Lucci’d him. It was an actual attack on my senses.

Sakazuki is an insanely fun deck, but takes a lot of practice. I recommend it though.

It’s honestly very hard to beat Sakazuki by outplaying him, so you would need to pick a deck that is good vs Sakazuki, or play Sakazuki in my opinion.

Katakuri

As the promo 4c Law is still not out yet in English, I have excluded it from the decklist, but once it is released, I recommend including it.

Katakuri as a deck is essentially a pure midrange deck. The only other pure midrange deck that we have had in the history of the game I believe is OP01 Green Kid using Okiku, Hawkins, and 7c Kid etc. Midrange decks tend to want to play strong cards on curve, and push through the opponent with these cards. Katakuri has one of the strongest cards in the game as a benefit. Just for a bit of fun, let’s look at the value that 10 cost Charlotte LinLin brings.

Katakuri has a spot in the meta thanks to his good matchup vs Sakazuki.

Although Katakuri hasn’t had any significant buffs in OP05 aside from Gedatsu, which many people are cutting, Katakuri’s pure power is too much to overcome.

Katakuri’s place in the meta was a little unknown for a while as everyone and their mother that was playing Yellow, was playing Enel. This was largely due to the fast that Purple Luffy could delay 10c Mom thanks to Magellan. While Katakuri was never bad, it didn’t have any massively winning matchups over Enel, which made people want to play Enel instead.

Originally, Sakazuki also beat Enel as well, as Sakazuki would run 9 Mihawk, and 10 Kaido. This would never let Katakuri’s board stick, and thus, the only viable way to beat Sakazuki or Luffy as Yellow was to play Enel, and aggro the opponent down with Ohm Holy, and 7c Enel. However, when a new Tempo style of Sakazuki came out that was strong in the mirror, as well as some matchups that used to be 50-50 to slightly losing like RG Law, the Katakuri matchup became weaker.

As Katakuri needed to pressure the opponents life hard in a way that Enel used to try to do, 4 7c Mom is the norm, and the objective is to take first vs Sakazuki, and play 7mom -> 7mom -> 10mom.

As Katakuri doesn’t have too much depth in terms of playing, let’s just look over some cards and how to use them.

Gedatsu: Gedatsu is a very very strong card, but not very good vs Purple Luffy as he ramps, and takes his own life. However, in the mirror, and against Sakazuki you can occasionally find good timings to KO a stray 4 cost that the opponent plays. From Sakazuki’s side, to prevent this, if he is left at 4 life on turn 2, he would play 4c Borsalino if he has it.

Smoothie: The Katakuri vs Enel matchup is very weird, and I personally think that the hitting aggressive style of Enel is better than the starving defensive style of Enel. The hitting style of Enel can overwhelm Katakuri with cards that develop board such as Ohm Holy. However, as Enel plays a starving style recently, there will be a massive disparity in resources between Katakuri and Enel. As Katakuri will rarely ever be at lower life than the opponent, Cracker’s value is low. However, against Enel, if Enel tries to starve Katakuri, Katakuri can use Smoothie to retrieve some extra resources, or push harder for lethal if necessary.

Satori: As Katakuri wants to play aggro, having more characters that can come out of trigger are strong. Satori being a 2000 counter with trigger is very strong, and worth more than the searchability of Sanji, or Amande for example. However, be careful when you play this, as you are still losing a 2000 counter when you play it out of life. Make sure that you can get back more than a 2000 counter + whatever card you trashed worth of value, if you play this out of Trigger. Occasionally you might find it’s better not to play it.

Thunderbolt: Thunderbolt is crazy. In this meta, it is actually cast from hand significantly more than usual as it can help get past the last line of blockers from Sakazuki to push for lethal.

200 Million Volt Varie: For the cards that can’t be Thunderbolted like Borsalino, this card exists. This card has insane value written on it, giving +3000 for 2 cost, as well as resting a 4 cost. It is a card that cannot be ignored, which forces people to put down more blockers than they seem they would need to, or find good timings to play Sabo, or other high cost blockers. Just need to be careful of Thunderbolt after that.

Purple Luffy

Purple Luffy hasn’t changed significantly since his inception. The plan has always been to play large bodies faster than the curve, and over power the opponent with power and consistency through the extra draw. Originally people would use the 7/9000 Urashima vanilla, and 4 9c Kaido as pulling this off was almost unfair. Since then, people have discovered more tech cards to make the matchup a little more technical, such as Pualie, or Magellan. Along with this, Sakazuki could exploit Luffy very hard if he played 9c Kaido, so the count of this card was reduced.

One of the strength of Luffy is that he can also go first.

Let’s look at a standard flow of moves going first:

The number represent the max don Luffy has at the start of the turn.

1: Pass

3: Leader ability (4don), 4/6000 Vanilla

6: Leader ability (7don), 7cost Kid / Paulie

8/10: Leader ability (9don) 9Kaido / 2 5cost bodies in a case where you played Paulie

Then going second is:

2: Pass

4: Leader ability (5don), Magellan(4don)

6: Leader ability (7don), 7cost Kid / Paulie

8/10: Leader ability (9don) 9Kaido / 2 5cost bodies in a case where you played Paulie

Being able to be strong going first and second is insane, and why Luffy was, and still is, high tier.

Although the list hasn’t changed recently, one tech card that has been included is Sheep’s Horn.

Sheep’s Horn, and I didn’t realize this until a few days ago, rests a 6 cost or less. When going for lethal, this is a Super Paradise Totsuka, as it can rest those annoying 5 cost blockers, while letting you retrieve a Don with leader ability. This helps Luffy make that final push vs Sakazuki, who relies on good defense and board clear to amend the weakness of having little card draw and 4 life.

Luffy is very straight forward to play, but needs a little bit of forethought for when you want to use your leader ability. Recklessly using it down to 2 life can kill you occasionally, but not using makes your leader a vanilla. That being said, just knowing what you want to do in the next few coming turns is enough so you can set up the play with your Don. Misusing your don minus effects in the early game can hurt Luffy more than it hurts the opponent. Ulti Page One is very strong, and certainly good vs Sakazuki, but is not the play in the mirror, as you can’t play 7 cost Kid first anymore. Additionally, just because Luffy can play 4 cost Law, it doesn’t mean you always should. The longer the game goes, the more people will fix their hand and make it stronger. Using Law later in the game will break their plan harder than if you were to play it on turn 2, when their hand was mediocre anyways.

Luffy is an easy deck, with ways to beat Sakazuki (don’t play 7Kid or 9Kaido vs Sakazuki, go for Paulie + many 5 cost characters) making it a very viable choice. Finding timings to play 5c Kid and use him to his full potential is what makes this deck fun for people who want to play with different mechanics.

For beating Luffy, aggro decks a very very good. Zoro or Belo Betty vs Luffy can destroy him. Even if you are not playing an aggro deck, trying to reduce Katakuri’s life before 10 Mom comes down is a better plan than trying to fight after 10 Mom comes out.

Although Katakuri’s trigger feel scary, 10 Mom is scarier, so choose the better of two evils.

Rebecca

The first list is the list I have been using for a very long time and have built myself from the ground up. The second list is a few changes I would have wanted to test if I had more time in OP05. This is truly a Caliber Patreon exclusive. Rebecca is close to my heart, and is my favorite deck in the game. While it may have struggled in the English OP04 meta due to aggro Whitebeard, it has finally started to shine in OP04.75. Rebecca in OP05 has only had buffs, but was ignored because of Sakazuki.

Rebecca has a spot in OP05, that no one even knows. Rebecca completely destroys the current popular type of Sakazuki. I am 12-0 vs Sakazuki with Rebecca, and 59-9 in general with Rebecca this set in practice games (it’s not sim game, but real life practice still does not replicate a real tournament environment so this doesn’t mean too much.) Unfortunately there were no large tournaments in all of OP05, as I chose to go to the tournament at the start of OP06, and you can only choose tournament to go to every 2 sets…

Anyway, Rebecca is my passion, and going over every card will take a bit too long. For the general philosophy on Rebecca, I have made a full guide on the OP04 Rebecca, but OP05 Rebecca plays very differently. 4c Rebecca and Mansherry unlocks the potential for many cards such as 5c Cavendish, 3c Koby, 3c Hina, 5c Garp, etc. I used to have many many 1ofs as Rebecca could play this All-You-Can-Eat style of being able to take any card that you wanted from your trash and use at the right time. I have changed the list and settled on this for consistency. With Rebecca’s leader ability, you gain a card, and drop another one into the trash. Then, you can use cards such as Sabo to get them out of your hand the same way that Sakazuki does. As you are playing Rebecca, where Mansherry and 4c Rebecca, some of the most broken cards in the game, are both searchable, you can consistently play Sabo over and over again as long as you have one in your trash. Not only this, but Sabo has rush with the stage.

Rebecca + Hina is essentially Orlumbus that can use his effect once, but in return, plays a blocker. Having more Orlumbus helps immensely with the Yellow matchup, as well as the Sakazuki matchup as it helps you continuously efficiently control the board. Those who played Rebecca in OP04 might know the feeling of Corrida Coliseum being a bit mid. You need Corrida for Luffy, and the security for Kyros, but you won’t use the rush as often as you would imagine. However, in OP05, as Sakazuki will now play Rebecca Hina Lucci, where Hina comes out rested, the stage shines very hard and completely abuses Sakazuki.

Rebecca combos boil down to finding where you can reduce cost, and where you can KO. Orlumbus can reduce cost for Rebecca to play Kyros or Koby, and Rebecca can reduce cost with Hina, or Trueno Bastardo, or Kyros/ Koby out of hand to KO. There is a lot of flexibility, and thanks to 4c Rebecca, Rebecca can reach costs that were awkward in old sets. Also, as 4c Rebecca, Mansherry, and Sabo are all dressrosa, therefore searchable, as well as being blockers or psuedo-blockers, Rebecca is immensely hard to push through, flipping the matchups that used to be losing to Rebecca. I have only lost to Katakuri once this set, but I acknowledge that the matchup takes a lot of management and precision to play correctly. Rebecca can beat any matchup if she draws well enough, but as she doesn’t have as much freedom as Sakazuki, she can still lose matchups by not drawing stage, or not drawing Rebecca etc.

I think that Rebecca’s only actual losing matchup, where she will lose if the opponent plays everything they want, is Purple Luffy. However, even this matchup is perfectly winnable as it’s rare for Luffy to be able to consistently Double Magellan for example.

The second list is an idea for if Luffy is more prominent, as that she can deal with him better with Three Thousand Worlds.

Here are some tips for OP05 Rebecca that can differ from OP04 Rebecca.

1. Don’t try to set up Orlumbus in matchups that it can be taken out immediately.
   1. It’s ok to treat Orlumbus as a 4 cost on play -4 cost, and should be held in your hand until you will actually use his effect.
2. Don’t try to drop Hina into your trash if it happens to come to hand.
   1. Playing Hina out of hand is insanely strong, especially on 6Don, as coupled with Kyros, can KO a 5 cost while playing 2 3/5000s
3. Look for openings to use Mansherry
   1. You can always search for cards with leader ability, but Mansherry let’s you go from drawing 2 cards a turn, to drawing 3. If you clear the opponent’s board, and play Mansherry and Sabo, and she lives, you can keep recycling Sabo and permanently keep her alive and immune to KO. Finding opportunities to set up Mansherry, or Luffy, is what will shut the opponent out of the game fast.
4. Defend every 5000-6000 hit within reason
   1. This isn’t anything new it’s just people still randomly take 5000 power attacks to leader because they want another card at 4 cards in hand. It’s ok to go down to even 2 cards, because of your leader ability.

Rebecca is more flexible from turn to turn compared to Sakazuki, making it a deck that’s harder to learn, but in my opinion, easier to master.

I cannot write everything there is to know about Rebecca, because every situation is different. The best advice is to not stick to 1 game plan, and master the art of finding every single option. Where Sakazuki you need to learn the correct patterns, Rebecca you need to play the game like it’s a Rubik’s cube. Find the right solution for the scenario, and play a few hundred games to get used to it and identify it faster.

Rebecca’s main weakness is the clock.

Going against Rebecca, you will want to play large bodies repeatedly until she runs out of tools to KO them all. Not every deck can do this, making Rebecca one of those decks that you might know if you’ll win or lose the second the leader is flipped over.

Enel

As I mentioned, there are two styles of Enel, a defensive, and offensive style. However, the defensive style is not only draw reliant, more difficult, and redundant with Queen, it’s almost less fun. Enel is in a bit of an awkward spot, because Katakuri is a stronger aggressive midrange deck, and Queen is a stronger control deck. However, Enel is very very good at beating bad players. In this section I’ll focus a little on how to play Enel in this more aggressive style, and a little more on how to play against Enel.

I think I’ll write a short individual article on how to beat Enel going into a little more depth, but this should be a good start.

When playing Enel, you will want to go first, and play an aggressive curve. If you intend to KO with Gedatsu, then be careful with hitting on turn 2. Otherwise, play characters that keep pressure on the opponent while making it harder for the opponent to win the game. Similar to Katakuri, you can close out the game suddenly with Thunderbolt, or 20 Million Volt.

In the mirror, you do not want to be the first to rest your characters. The player going first should try to starve the player going second, and the player going second should try to rush down the game with Ohm Holy.

The mirror is surprisingly complex, and if you are struggling to figure out why you’re losing, consider what would happen if you don’t rest some of your characters.

To play a starve type of Enel, I would take out Ohm Holy, and other random Sky Island cards including 7 cost Enel, and add the Whole Cake Island package and numerous KO cards/ triggers. The goal with Starve Enel is to play nothing but KO cards, or hand refreshing cards in the early game, and then play 8 cost Katakuri, 9 cost Yamato over and over again, never hitting the opponents life, and slowly choking the opponent out of the game until you make a wall of 8000-9000 power attacks.

I don’t think this style is bad at all, I just do not like Enel that much, as he falls into a similar category that Nami does, where they can be countered by the correct play style.

Beating Enel

1. If you can avoid hitting Enel’s leader at any point, do so even if they have more than 5000 power.
   1. Enel’s leader ability only comes into play when he’s put down to 0 life, but can be used once per turn. This means that if you were to hit Enel to try to get him down to 0 every turn, he can always take 1 attack for free.
   2. When Enel is at 1 Life, he is actually at 2, meaning that you will need to get 3 whole hits through to win the game.
2. Don’t hit their life at 1 unless you can hit more than once.
   1. If you only hit once when they are at 1 life, it doesn’t actually get you closer to lethal, it gets you further. Enel’s leader ability isn’t a way to stop you from ending the game, it’s a way to refresh his hand. If you only hit once, it’s the same as a draw 1, trash 1, with the added benefit of being able to get triggers as well.
3. Keep Enel at 2 life
   1. Just because there’s no punishment for hitting Enel down to 1 life, that doesn’t mean you should. If Enel goes down to 1 life, he is able to use Yamato and infinitely stall the game as long as the opponent doesn’t have enough fire power to push through. Keep Enel at 2 life for as long as possible to prevent him from using Yamato well. In order to stop Yamato from KOing everything, make sure to take your life at a reasonable pace too. Just don’t over, or under do it.

So how do you push through Enel with this all in mind?

4.   Don’t rest your characters until you need to, and set up for a big lethal turn. The second you rest your characters, they become targets for Enel. To prevent you from starving Enel, “Starve Enel” doesn’t rest their characters either. While Enel slowly and steadily moves the goal post away by KOing characters and increasing their life, you must be getting ready to have one or two massive pushes for lethal. Enel can only KO one thing per turn, and hit with the rest of their characters, so finding good timings to rest all of your characters at once is important to breaking through.

These are just the basics, but they are important to keep in mind, as if people mindlessly hit Enel, he will become S tier, like he was in Japan for about 2 months. Be careful and be wise, and you can break Enel.

Belo Betty

Belo Betty is not my kind of deck. I enjoy Midrange or Control decks, but burn aggro in this game is a little too scary for me. That being said, Belo Betty is probably the best aggro deck in OP05 currently. Belo Betty is not hard winning vs Sakazuki, but is not losing either.

As Belo Betty, you will want to take second in most if not all matchups. Belo Betty does not have a strong turn 2 play going first, but when going second, can play Ivankov, leader ability, and then Karasu, optimally. Having Ivankov, or Karasu stay on the board can devastate the game and finish it in 4 turns possibly. Belo Betty does not need to worry about defending their life, or saving their resources, because if their first attack doesn’t work, then the game is over anyway.

As Belo Betty, you want to use your leader ability to make large pushes in damage, and also to use effects with the condition that need cards at 7000 power or higher, like Inazuma, Ivankov, or Karasu. If the opponent ever hits you as Belo Betty, with the exception of if you’re in danger of dying, you will want to take it as the deck runs many triggers.

On the other side, against Belo Betty, absolutely never hit her life until she’s out of fire power, and done. Hitting her because you have no target not only gives her resources, but chances to get triggers. You will want to avoid hitting the leader as much as possible, and just make sure that you can survive the first 5-6 turns until they are completely out of resources.

Understand what is in Belo Betty’s list, such as Sabo, or Koala into Kuma or Lindberg, so that you’re not putting yourself into a false sense of security behind a low cost blocker that can very easily be taken out.

Belo Betty struggles immensely against Enel, but otherwise is in a fairly decent spot in the meta.

Credit to my friend @greenarm_onepi for the list and research on Belo Betty.

Red Purple Law

Red Purple Law is very much not foreign in the English meta as he is doing very well in OP04.75. However, he is getting more buffs! I think that Red Purple Law is better than his playrate suggests as he is good against Katakuri and Sakazuki to an extent. Red Purple Law has the ability to ‘shambles’ one of the opponents characters with one of his own, at the cost of permanent Don. Generally the goal when playing RP Law will be to play 2 characters while bottoming one of your opponent’s characters. Then, once you manage to get 2+ characters on the board, you rest them all together with a rush Zoro as well. By hitting at 5000 repeatedly, you can take down many gets that are generally weak to aggro.

RP Law wants to take his first two life to gain resources, so to enable this, you don’t want to rest your characters too early. As Law wants to keep hitting and finish the game at a comparable speed to Belo Betty, you will generally want to defend attacks to characters that are easy to defend, but not over defend to the point that you have 1 character left on the board, and no hand.

As Red Purple Law is not the sort of deck that can cycle through their deck hard to make a consistent gameplan, the mulligan and knowledge for each matchup will be important to internalize. Although I didn’t do this for other leader in this article, I will do it very briefly at the end for RP Law, as it is crucial to playing Law well to know what to mulligan for.

As you can see, RP Law has very unique matchups, so this sort of graph was necessary to make. Massive credit to @kabopai_one on Twitter for being a dedicated RP Law player, and putting his knowledge out there for people to learn from.

Thank you for reading up until this point. OP05 looks grim for some people as it seems like nothing can beat Sakazuki, but this is only partially true. Nothing can beat great Sakazuki players. I still think that the meta will be quite diverse, as many decks are reasonably playable, even if the top end of tournaments is outweighed disproportionally by Sakazuki.

Having played through OP05 in Japan from start to finish it has been probably the most unique meta we’ve had. The best deck has changed multiple times. Every leader in this article (except Rebecca) had a brief time period where they shined and were in the talks of being close to the top of the tier list. The meta has moved so much, and although it has settled into a Sakazuki meta, there are still decks that can contend with it, that I anticipate will be very very popular in the English meta. The Meta Retrospective coming out soon will be something to look forward to.

Japan doesn’t have many championships, but perhaps this was why the meta was able to shift so much. No one was able to stand at the top and proclaim their deck to be the answer, so we got constant innovations, adaptations, and new leaders that came to break the meta, until they themselves were broken.

Thank you for reading up to here, I hope you enjoyed reading it. Cross has been slacking a bit, but I’m here to make sure the Patreon get’s their value, and more.

We will start putting out guides on individual leaders, as well as some OP06 things for fun as that’s the meta I’m playing in. I would like to make a Complete Deck Building Guide some day, but that’s actually a very big project that would take a few months to fully research.

We will continue to get good content to you, but the other end comes from testing, and good quality practice. If you want to elevate the level of your friends so that you can also get better practice, maybe recommend the Patreon. I have confidence that we can deliver the best articles on the market.

Stay Safe, Cheers,

Kai (@ikailakai)

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Note from Cross:

Thank you to all the patrons and everyone who made it to the end. These last couple months of this semester(of college) have been kicking me, but it is finally coming to an end at the end of next week! This means that I will start putting out my own personal OP05 content too. The current plan is individual articles, and we will start looking at how the meta will shape-up in English, once we have had some of our first OP05 tournaments.

Since I haven’t given my thoughts on the meta anywhere yet, I would like to give some brief takes:

I think Sakazuki and Purple Luffy are by far the strongest decks atm, and I think PLuffy will be able to somewhat stand up to Sakazuki, depending on construction and especially how the matchup is played.

Yellow Enel seems straight up worse than Yellow Katakuri to me at the moment, as far as I’m aware, Enel is bad into PLuffy, and only inconsistently beats (good) Sakazuki. I have yet to personally try to crack Ohm-Holy Enel, as I have been testing the Starve Enel deck(which actually has been pretty strong into Sakazuki). But once I have extensively tested the Ohm-Holy version, I will have finalized thoughts on Enel.

I think Red Zoro has a lot of potential. It was evaluated quite low in Japan, but I did see it start picking up a bit towards the end of the meta. Enel should be Zoro’s worst matchup, but Zoro seems to certainly be capable of beating Sakazuki, Katakuri, and PLuffy.

Lastly, Law seems to still be a strong deck, but it’s Sakazuki matchup is looking very atrocious. Word on the street is that Law can win if Sakazuki does not see too many Luccis, but that is a pretty bold thing to hope for. I will test Law in OP05, but Film Brook version seems like the only way it will stand a chance. I know Japan’s never been a fan of Film Brook, so hopefully, that version is good ENOUGH into Sakazuki, and can allow my Law copers to still breathe.

That’s it for my brief thoughts, hope to bring more content to the YouTube, Patreon, and streams soon. And with that being said I will catch y’all in the next one, peace.